The common housefly, known as the Musca Domestica, is a small gray insect with four black stripes across the thorax. Approximately four to eight millimeters in length, houseflies can become a real nuisance, and pose important health threats because of the things they eat and tendency to land on everyone and everything.
Nasty Habits of Houseflies
While houseflies prefer to land on edges, corners and thin objects, they will rest about anywhere in your home, even floors and ceilings. Outdoors, houseflies are not too selective about choosing places to rest. Their preferred places to land include the ground, fence wires, garbage and garbage cans, waste and worse.
Once the sun has gone down, houseflies will rest near their food sources, approximately five to fifteen feet off of the ground. While it may not sound tasty to you, flies enjoy a wide variety of foods, including human and animal food, animal carcasses, garbage and excrement’s.
Infestations of Houseflies
Houseflies will lay their eggs in nearly any warm, moist substance or material that they believe will supply a suitable food supply for the larvae. One female housefly can lay up to six batches of 75 to 100 eggs which can hatch in up to 12 to 24 hours if the climate is warm enough.
If there is an infestation, adult houseflies are the most active. You may also notice larvae once they leave the breeding materials to pupate. It is also common to spot pupae near the breeding material. Once they emerge from the pupae, houseflies cease to grow. Houseflies can complete the egg, larvae and pupae stages in approximately ten days.
Why Are Houseflies So Nasty
While the average life span of a housefly is only one month outdoors, during that time they can multiply and spread a lot of bacteria. If you are wondering why houseflies always tend to migrate towards food and fecal matter, their bodies are covered with small hairs that work like taste organs.
The housefly can easily locate food due to their complex eye systems, composed of thousands of individual lenses which provide a wide field of vision. If your home or business is infested with flies, you have much to worry about because these flying vermin are major disease carriers.
Houseflies are believed to carry more than one hundred pathogens that are known to cause a variety of serious ailments such as typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis and dysentery. This happens while eating unsanitary and decaying materials, causing the houseflies collect to pathogens on their legs and mouths. These pathogens are then carried to the next place the housefly lands, such as the rim of your glass or your freshly made sandwich.
Hire an Exterminator for Fly Infestations
Because flies transfer diseases and are, in general, a terrible nuisance, you will want to get rid of them before they have time to multiply and contaminate every surface in your home. Controlling houseflies is not easy but with the help of a professional, it can be done.
House fly control cannot be done with a common fly swatter. In fact, a fly swat can actually spread germs and bacteria with each new surface it contaminates. Choosing a professional exterminator for the houseflies in your home is the first step toward controlling the infestation.
Your professional exterminator will determine the type of fly that has invaded your home or office. Identification is very important because there are several fly species that look similar, but all require different methods for control.
The exterminator must identify the locations in your living space where flies have been depositing the eggs. Trash cans, pet bowls, and patio furniture are among a few of the places that he will check; the breeding sites are not always obvious but a professional will have no trouble finding them.
Once the breeding sites are located by the trained eyes of an exterminator, he will clean and remove the materials, eggs and larvae, thus ending the problem. If there are any structural issues causing your infestation, he will consult you on possible repairs to make that will prevent re-infestation. Consider the condition of your window and door screens and whether it is time for new weather stripping.